This is the home page for Peter Chapin's Senior Projects course notes for the 2023/2024 academic year. Here you will find class handouts, homework assignments, lecture slides, and links to other references of interest.
The class schedule provides an approximate timeline for the course and lists topics covered in the lecture.
The Introductory Information document gives an overview of the course, lists course resources, and describes the grading policy.
The official course outline: CIS-4721.
Looking for project ideas? I have a document with a few possibilities. You are under no obligation to use any of my ideas, however.
There are some possible senior projects pertaining to the CubeSat project. Here is a short video that demonstrates Jenkins to give you an idea of what that system is about.
Sample Project Proposal (OpenDocument source of the sample proposal). This document gives you an idea of what should be included in your project proposal. The most recent version of the proposal document, along with other sample project artifacts, can be found in the HWRNG GitHub repository).
You will be required to make use of GitHub for storing project artifacts. You may also find the tool GitHub Desktop useful. It provides a user-friendly interface to Git for Windows and macOS users (no Linux version is available).
Project Requirements Template. This document can be used as a starting point for your own Requirements document. Here is the ODF source or MS Word source of the template document. You might consider using a text file format (HTML? Markdown? LaTeX? DocBook?) since text files play better with version control.
Here is the documentation set for the HWRNG project. It includes the requirements for that project (a work in progress) as one chapter.
In some cases, you can use a reference manual to supply your system's functional requirements. Some sort of reference manual will be required eventually in any case, so writing a reference manual as your requirements document allows you to satisfy multiple course requirements at once (in cases where it makes sense). Here is a sample reference manual for a Z-80 simulator (it's a small scale microprocessor) that I wrote in 1990.
Progress Report Template. Use this as a guide for writing weekly progress reports.
A required document for this course is an architecture and design document.
Project Documentation. This presentation gives some details on the formal documentation set I will require for your project.
User Manual Template (LaTeX format). A document from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. Although this document contains many sections that might not be relevant for a small project, you might still find it useful as a starting point for your own User Manual. I have also prepared a DocBook User Manual Template that you might find interesting.
Technical Research. This is a presentation with some thoughts about how to go about researching technical subjects.
Eric Raymond has written an essay on How to Ask Questions the Smart Way. In this essay, he describes how to effectively ask questions in on-line forums.
Formal Presentations. This is a presentation about giving presentations (a "meta-presentation").
The class schedule provides an approximate timeline for the course and lists topics covered in the lecture.
The official course outline: CIS-4722.
Progress Report Template. Use this as a guide for writing weekly progress reports.
In addition, each team should create a GitHub repository and populate it with whatever documents and code artifacts they may have. Note that it is permitted for the documents to reside elsewhere (Google Docs, MS Teams, etc.) provided information about how to access them is in the GitHub repository.
Finally, each team should create a skeletal project website that describes the project for outsiders (potential users, investors, etc.). Both the website and the repository will be used more heavily during the spring semester.
You will also want to resubmit the documents from the previous semester: Proposal, Requirements, Schedule, and Architecture & Design. These documents may be the same as from last semester, but it is likely you will want to update them as your project proceeds. Submit the updated documents.
Last Revised: 2024-01-26
Copyright 2024 by Peter Chapin <peter.chapin@vermontstate.edu>